Chapter 2
ANDY
The case file on my desk is the thinnest I've handled in years.
I left Rapier Strategic before dawn. Drove home, showered, put on a fresh shirt, and made the precinct by the time the day shift was pouring its first round of coffee. That was hours ago.
On paper, this case shouldn't exist.
I lean back in my chair and reread Renata's statement for the third time.
The precinct hums around me, the sound of phones and keyboards blending into the low noise of a homicide division that never fully shuts down.
My coffee went cold a while ago. The overhead fluorescents cast the same washed-out light they always do.
My partner Fontenot is two desks over, working a domestic that went sideways in Algiers last night.
He has a real case, a body on the ground, witnesses who saw it happen, a suspect in custody by dawn.
A clean solve with good clearance numbers.
Mine has none of that. What mine has is Renata's voice in my ear from the small hours of this morning, sharp and controlled, holding back enough to fill a second statement.
She told me what happened. She did not tell me everything. The distinction sat with me the whole drive back from Rapier Strategic, and it's sitting with me now.
Renata described the murder cleanly. She gave me the location, the positioning, the suppressed gunshot, the victim's face caught in the fluorescent light.
Her recall was detailed, organized, the sort of precision that comes from either training or a mind wired to process spatial information under pressure.
Bartenders are observant, but this went beyond that.
Whatever taught her to catalog a room that fast and that thoroughly, it predates Dominion.
I don't know what it is yet. But I know it's there.
I also know she was scared, and not just of the murder, though that fear was real.
She was scared of me, scared of the badge, and more than either of those, scared of the man behind it.
I've spent enough nights at Dominion to recognize what her bravado costs her, and last night, sitting across a conference table in the dead hours before dawn with adrenaline still running hot in her blood, the cost showed.
My desk phone rings. I pick up.
"Broussard, Homicide."
"Detective, this is dispatch. We've got a missing persons report filed about an hour ago.
Lawrence Blanchard, resident of the Garden District.
Family says he didn't come home last night, missed a morning appointment, phone going straight to voicemail.
Flagged to your desk because of the name match on the 911 call from early this morning. "
There it is. When I asked Renata whether the patrol officers had checked if Blanchard had been reported missing, it was too early for anyone to have filed.
I asked the question because I knew it was coming, and I wanted her to see that the cops who dismissed her hadn't bothered to think that far ahead.
Now the report is here, and Renata's account just got its first piece of corroboration.
My pulse doesn't change. I don't let it. "Send me the report."
"Coming through now."
The file loads on my screen. Lawrence Blanchard, retired, with a Garden District address.
His wife filed the report when he didn't return from what she described as "his evening out.
" She gave no further details about where "out" meant.
She either doesn't know about Dominion or she's protecting his privacy.
I pull up the 911 log from last night. Renata's call was timestamped at 3:07 AM. Patrol was dispatched at 3:09, with officers on scene by 3:18. The report filed reads: no evidence found, complainant potentially intoxicated, case recommended for closure.
Potentially intoxicated. Renata, who spent hours serving drinks without consuming any, who gave a statement detailed enough to pass as court testimony, was written off because a patrol officer decided a bartender reporting a murder at three in the morning was probably drunk.
Lawrence Blanchard is missing. His family confirms he didn't come home. And the patrol unit that responded to Renata's call recommended closure because they didn't find a body.
I reach for my phone and call the parking garage management company. It takes three transfers before I get someone who can access the security system.
"I need footage from last night," I tell the building manager. "All cameras, all levels, midnight to six AM."
"Which garage?"
I give him the address.
Silence on the other end. Then: "Detective, I'm looking at the system now. We had a technical issue overnight. The recording server reset in the early morning hours. Everything before that is intact. Everything after is blank."
"All cameras?"
"All cameras. Full system reset. Our tech support says it looks like a remote access wipe, but they're still diagnosing."
"Don't let anyone touch that system. I'm sending a forensic tech."
I end the call and sit with what I now have. A man is missing. A witness saw him die. And the surveillance system that should have recorded what happened was remotely wiped in the hours around the murder.
This is a professional operation. Whoever did this has the resources to wipe a commercial security system remotely and clean a crime scene to forensic standards in the time it took Renata to drive away and call 911.
I stand, grab my file, and head for the captain's office.
Captain Hebert's door is open, which means he's available but not happy about it. He's been running homicide for over a decade, a thick-shouldered man with reading glasses perpetually pushed up on his forehead and a disposition that runs from impatient to deeply impatient depending on the day.
"Broussard." He doesn't look up from his screen. "What."
"The 911 call from last night. Parking garage in the Irish Channel. Patrol found nothing and recommended closure."
"I saw the report. No evidence, no body, no case." He finally looks up. "Why are you in my office?"
"Because my witness identified the victim by name.
Lawrence Blanchard, Garden District family.
His wife filed a missing persons report this morning.
He didn't come home last night, missed a morning appointment, phone's off.
And the security cameras at that garage were remotely wiped in the hours around the killing. Professional-grade hack."
Hebert takes off his reading glasses and sets them on the desk. "How did your witness identify the victim?"
"She knew him. She described an execution-style killing. Suppressed weapon, single shot. When she returned with patrol, the body and all physical evidence had been removed and the floor had been cleaned with chemical agents."
"How much time between her 911 call and patrol arrival at her car?"
"Minutes. Not long. Then the time to get to the scene."
He considers that. I can see him weighing it: the resources it would take to clean a scene that fast, the sophistication of a remote camera wipe, the coincidence of a missing person matching the witness's account.
"You have a body?"
"No, sir."
"Forensic evidence?"
"The garage floor was chemically cleaned. I've requested a forensic sweep but I'm not optimistic."
"So you have a bartender's statement, a missing person, and wiped cameras. No physical evidence of any crime."
"The camera wipe is evidence. Someone with technical capability accessed that system remotely and erased the footage from the hours around the murder. That's destruction of evidence, which means there was evidence to destroy."
Hebert leans back. "That's a reach, Broussard."
"With respect, sir, it's a logical inference supported by the circumstantial evidence we do have. A man is missing. A witness says she saw him killed. The surveillance system that would have recorded the killing was remotely destroyed. Those facts aren't unrelated."
"They're also not proof." He puts his glasses back on.
"I'll give you the rest of the day. Pull whatever you can on the camera system, run the missing persons angle, see if forensics turns up anything at the garage.
If you don't have something solid by end of shift tomorrow, this goes to the bottom of the pile.
I've got cases with bodies, Broussard. Bodies beat theories. "
"Understood."
I walk back to my desk. It's not a yes, but it's not a no. I have roughly thirty-six hours to turn a phantom case into something real.
Fontenot glances up as I sit down. "Hebert give you the ghost murder?"
"Missing person with circumstantial evidence of foul play."
"Right." He leans back, arms crossed. "You know what I think?"
"I know what you're going to say."
"I think you're chasing a dead end because the bartender's pretty and you feel sorry for her.
" He says it casually, the way partners say things that are meant to land.
"No body, no blood, no case. Even if some rich guy didn't come home last night, that doesn't mean he got clipped in a parking garage. Means he's sleeping it off somewhere."
"His phone's off and his car's not at any of his known addresses."
"So he went on a bender. New Orleans, man. It happens."
I don't argue. Fontenot's not wrong from where he's sitting.
Without physical evidence, this looks like exactly what patrol called it: a waste of time.
But Fontenot wasn't at Rapier Strategic in the early hours this morning.
He didn't see Renata's hands shake while her voice stayed level.
He didn't hear the professional cleanup she described, the lighting change, the complete absence of evidence where a body should have been.
And he doesn't know Lawrence ordered Blanton's Single Barrel neat at the same barstool twice a week for years. He doesn't know the man is a Dominion member. He doesn't know any of it, and I can't tell him without opening a door I need to keep shut.
My phone buzzes with a text from Remy: